


Letters to Twist Immortality

by twinyards



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, idk if the ending is happy?, is anything i ever write REALLY happy?, kinda I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:51:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinyards/pseuds/twinyards
Summary: Thomas wrote more letters than just about anyone he knew. A handful a day, at the very least. People often thought his habit of carrying a notebook and paper, so he could squat and write when the desire struck, was sweet in a strange way, until they realized the truth. Thomas’ letters were like most things; simple and endearing, if you didn’t look beneath the surface.Thomas wrote many letters. To many things. To many people.But mostly, he wrote to the Gladers.Specifically, Alby and Chuck and Teresa.But it didn't matter how many letters Thomas wrote, because no matter who he started writing to, Thomas always found that half way through he was writing to someone else. A different ghost but a ghost all the same. Whenever he touched pen to paper, even if he strained for focus and murmured his words out loud, it seemed every pen stroke lead back to one name.Newt.





	Letters to Twist Immortality

Thomas wrote more letters than just about anyone he knew. A handful a day, at the very least. People often thought his habit of carrying a notebook and paper, so he could squat and write when the desire struck, was sweet in a strange way, until they realized the truth. Thomas’ letters were like most things; simple and endearing, if you didn’t look beneath the surface.

Sometimes they were light. Sometimes they were funny. Sometimes they were a double edged sword of painful memories and the cold bite of anger. Thomas wrote letters to his friends. It just happened that most of his friends were dead. And all the ones he wrote too were corpses long since decayed down to nothing but bones. But Thomas wrote to them anyways; kept them alive and immortalized in written word.

He also wrote letters to the past. Sometimes they were feathery and reminiscent. Sometimes they were heavy with loss and hot with pain. Sometimes they were a simple question, on tear stained paper, in the nervous sprawl of a man riddled with survivor’s guilt. _Why did I live when they died?_

He wrote letters to the future. Sometimes they were whimsical and wanting. Sometimes they were accusatory and fraught with demand. Sometimes they were the wish and ache of a boy trapped in a world without the people he loved most, pleading to his future self to guard his heart more fiercely.

He wrote letters to the universe. Sometimes he thanked it for Minho and Brenda; for their lives and their continued strength. Sometimes he cursed it for the bodies he’d never gotten to bury, the names he never properly knew, the faces already smudging in his memory. Sometimes he asked why he couldn't be where he most longed to be, before scribbling out the words and cursing himself for his weakness.

Thomas wrote many letters. To many things. To many people.

But mostly, he wrote to the Gladers.

Specifically, Alby and Chuck and Teresa.

Chuck’s letters were always a rollercoaster of an ordeal. Despite his immunity and his survival, Thomas was far from the happiest of the previous WICKED captives, now living out their days in relative sanctuary. In fact, Thomas was one of the saddest. For some reason, he carried a heavier burden than most. An inability to take a step without pulling the memories of the tortured and the dead and the forgotten along with him. Chuck wouldn't have liked that though, so Thomas endeavored to write something funny. He told Chuck about teaching Brenda Glader slang, and how she’d snorted coffee up her nose laughing at stories of Chuck and his profound love for the word _klunk_. Thomas thought his friend would have liked that.

Alby’s letters were heavy. Thomas carried them in his pocket, weighed down by their contents until his muscles strained and quaked against the burden. He told Alby about the people he’d saved, and how they smiled more and laughed more every day, and the people he’d failed, and how they lived in his weary mind and spoke to him in his dreams. He tried to convey that he was still trying to atone for his time spent with WICKED. That he was still trying to be the leader Alby would have wanted him to be. That he was still trying to be the friend he’d always strived to embody, a sturdy shoulder to lean on when someone shook with fear or grief. He wanted Alby to know that his faith in Thomas hadn’t been misplaced. That Thomas had always done his best to protect their friends. He wanted Alby to be proud.

Teresa’s letters were a flame. Thomas’ fingers burned with each word and his chest seemed to cave in as if he were breathing in smoke. Where Teresa was concerned, he was either aflame with rage or burnt down to an ember of longing. He missed her. All the time, he missed her. And he told her often of how much he hated that. Because he was still angry at her for betraying him but she was _dead_ and you couldn’t hate a dead girl.

But it didn't matter how many letters Thomas wrote, because no matter who he _started_ writing to, Thomas always found that half way through he was writing to someone else. A different ghost but a ghost all the same. Whenever he touched pen to paper, even if he strained for focus and murmured his words out loud, it seemed every pen stroke lead back to one name.

 _Newt_.

The one person he never _meant_ to write to. The one person who’s name burned a hole in his tongue so hot and so agonizing when he spoke it that Thomas had stopped saying it at all. The one person who's absence was as permanent a fixture as Thomas’ shadow.

No, he never meant to write to Newt. Newt was a wound to fresh and too gritty and too bloody to do anything but cauterize with task after task. But it didn't matter. By the time he finished a letter, he was always writing to Newt anyway.

It was beginning to weigh on him, however, that he couldn’t finish a letter to Chuck or Alby or Teresa. It felt like he didn’t value them, like he was pushing them aside. Which was why he sat alone by the fire now, staring at the blank piece of paper in his notebook, a nicked and dying pen in his hand, preparing himself to write the letter he’d been avoiding for months.

Shifting his words to speak to Newt inside someone else’s letter had been natural, instinct. But starting one was much harder. He couldn’t seem to make his hand move. Anxiety and anguish were steel rods in his ribcage, threatening to shred his heart to useless tatters of muscle and flesh. Thomas did not want to do this.

But he owed it to Newt. To Alby and Chuck and Teresa. And he owed it to myself.

There were words that needed to be said. Truths he needed to unearth. Emotions he needed to voice. So Thomas grit his teeth against the threat of an onslaught of tears, and began to move his hand across the page.

_Dear Newt,_

_This isn’t the first letter I’ve written, by long shot. In fact, I’ve lost count of how many apologies and memories and wishes I’ve scribbled across paper since I we left the Maze. Hell, it’s not even the first letter I’ve ever written to you, but it’s the first one I’m writing on purpose._

_We’ve been at the Sanctuary for almost a year now. You’ve been dead a bit longer than that. It’s a rule, around here, that we don’t talk about you. Not because we don’t miss you. Minho used to always catch himself trying to say you would love something, and Gally would talk all the time about how you were a stupid shank about me, but we could do with leading a bit more like you did. Sometimes even Brenda would mention you. But they all stopped._

_Not because of you._

_Because of me._

_Losing Alby was hard. Losing Chuck was agony. Losing so many others made me feel like I was a boy made of glass, slowly shattering and trying not to let anyone cut themselves on all my jagged edges. Losing you is unbearable._

_It’s still present tense. I can’t say I_ lost _you, because that implies somehow that the pain has passed. When really it’s fresh every day._

 _Sometimes, when I’m right on the edge of sleep, I forget that you’re dead. I forget that you’re dead because of me. And it’s the only time I feel okay. It’s the only time I feel like_ Thomas _and not a ghost. Because the truth is, I died too, the day I killed you. And we both die all over again, every day, when I wake up and realize you’re not here to tell me to get my shuck ass in gear and pull my weight._

_So it’s present tense. Our lives begin again, just for a moment, right before I fall asleep. And our lives end again, the moment dreams talk hold._

_I think there might be some sort of poetic justice to that. It seems an almost divine sort of punishment; a twisted sense of immortality. But what else do I deserve for killing my best friend?_

_When we first got here, me and Minho and Brenda and Gally and all the rest, they tell me I used to yell your name in my sleep. The first time, they couldn’t wake me. When I finally came to, Minho was shaking me. I’d never seen him looked so destroyed before. He said when I first started calling out for you, it was soft. Like I was trying to get your attention. Like you were just out of earshot and I was trying to catch up._

_And then it changed. My voice. He said he’d never heard me scream like that. That it was worse than Chuck, worse than Teresa, worse than anything he’d ever seen. Minho said he’d never heard someone in so much pain. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in my dream you were dying again, but I think he knew anyways._

_I guess you wouldn’t know about Teresa, that she’s dead too. Sometimes, I think you might be happy about that, but then I remember you. The real you. And I don’t think you’d celebrate anyone’s dying. You should know though, that she tried to make things right. I don’t know if I forgive her; for the betrayal, for dying._

_I don’t know if I forgive you, either. For dying. For leaving me alone. For carving a hole in my chest that nothing can fill. For leaving a void that trembles and aches and burns. For taking every piece of me down with you. For making me kill you. For making me kill the brightest piece of myself._

_And I hate you for it. There are moments where I remember the glaze clearing from your eyes and the_ Tommy _on your lips and the weight of your death in my hands. And I hate you so much that my pain burns so bright it’s blinding and all I want to do is scream in your face and tell you how selfish and stupid and horrible you are._

_And then I spiral._

_Because I don’t hate you. Not really. Not even at all. How could you hate the most precious desire of your heart?_

_I never told you. I don’t know if you knew. I don’t know if you thought that I loved Teresa until the end. Or that Brenda took her place in my heart. If you did, you were wrong. There was no place for Brenda to take over. No place Teresa filled that wasn’t a bond forged by a mutual past, shared history and nothing more._

_I’ve only ever been in love with one person. The Glue that held me together. This stupid boy with a weird accident and hair the color of the corn in Zart’s garden and eyes the color of chocolate I’ve forgotten the taste of._

_I’ve only ever been in love with one boy._

You.

_I wish I’d had the nerve to tell you that when you were alive. When I was living and not walking through the world like a zombie. You used to tell me that when people get lazy, they get sad, and that’s why rules were so strict in the Glade. To keep everyone busy. But I keep busy all the time and I don’t feel any better._

_Is there even such a thing as feeling better, when you’re living in a nightmare painted over with bright colors, pretending to be a dream come true?_

_I have a confession to make. Sometimes I wish something bad would happen. That I would get sick or that there’d be some kind of natural disaster, anything,_ anything _, that would let me be with you again. I can’t do it myself. I wouldn’t. Not when Minho still looks to me when he misses you, not when Gally finally wants to follow my lead, not when Brenda is trying so hard every day to make me smile, not when everyone is watching me and waiting for me to keep them going. But it doesn’t stop me from wishing I had an excuse to give up, just so I could see you again as you were._

_Smiling._

_Happy to see me._

_Haunted is a good word for how I feel when the stars come out and I realize I can’t join them. Join you._

_But I know you’d be angry with me for dying. And so I fight harder here than I think I ever did in the Maze, or out in the Scorch, or against WICKED. To be the person you believed me to be. To be a man worthy of you._

_This letter is the hardest one I’ve ever written, because it hurts the most. It’s also the easiest I’ve ever written, because I always have so much to tell you. I’ll write more now. To you and to everyone else._

_I hope there’s some way you can read this. Or at least know what it says._

_I hope you’re proud of everyone, of me, for all we’ve accomplished._

_I hope there’s some kind of afterlife you’re watching from._

_I hope you’re waiting for me there._

_But mostly I hope you got your memories back. That you’re happy. That you’re getting to live the life you never got when you were alive._

_The first letter of many, and until we meet again,_

_Tommy_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! As always, please comment and leave kudos if you enjoyed this. I live for y'all's feedback.  
> Also, I have a newtmas modern!au multi-chapter fic in the works, and I'm hoping to have it up soon, so keep an eye out.


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